To Clone or Not to Clone
by Balin Lord of Moria
Summary: Two-shot. Two military leaders. One believes that clones are unfit to be soldiers. The other believes that "real" people are unfit to be soldiers. Argument about clone troopers and non-clone soldiers between Rahm Kota and Commander Cody. Who is right? Opinions are welcome, but I won't die without them.
1. Non-clones are better than clones!

**A/N: **This two-shot story takes place within the _Star Wars: The Force Unleashed_ video game world, primarily, though it does have a few references to _Republic Commando _and _The Clone Wars_, too. It discusses Rahm Kota's low opinion of clones, and Commander Cody's low opinion of enlisted troopers. For a while I've been interested in the contrasting opinions of Kota and Cody regarded clones and ordinary people, and I wanted to compare the two character's beliefs in a short shory, hence, this fanfic. Let me know, if you want to, whether you think Kota or Cody is closer to the truth of the Star Wars universe.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Star Wars: The Force Unleashed or any of its characters, Disney and Lucasarts do.

* * *

**Non-clones are better than clones!**

It amazes me sometimes what people will do in order to fight or win a war. I am a great military leader myself, a Jedi General, to be more precise, but I can't believe most of my fellow Jedi would actually accept the use of a _clone_ army to fight in this terrible war.

My name is Jedi Master Rahm Kota. I am a General of the Clone Wars, and a highly respected one, too. But I do not trust this clone army we have been given to wage war against the Separatists, especially not after learning from Master Obi-Wan Kenobi that they are conditioned to obey orders without question, and have limits to their creativity and intuition in battle. And here I wish to explain why I don't like any of the clones, and how I have dealt with it as a Jedi General in the war.

Because of my distrust of clones, I recruited my own militia to fight in the war, and it consisted of many soldiers, both human and alien, from a variety of neutral and backwater worlds, and even some Separatist prisoners-of-war whom I believed had been treated more unfairly for fighting for the CIS than I think they deserved. Although we were a small militia, it always my opinion, and it still is, that non-clone soldiers are superior in virtually every way to clone troopers. Why, you may ask?

It's really quite simple. The Fett clones of Kamino were bred and programmed to follow orders without question, like I said above, and they had little to no freedom to disobey or even object to an order, which means they were capable of doing just about anything, from saving women and children survivors of a planetary bombardment, to burning down entire cities and executing their inhabitants as brutally and painfully as possible. The basic message I got from this news is that the morality and content of a clone trooper's orders mattered less to him than simply obeying those orders, meaning that the clones couldn't care less what sorts of deeds they committed, as long as they succeeded in carrying them out. These "creatures" had (and have) no sense of ethics whatsoever.

Another of their problems is that they had to follow all of their orders to the very letter, which meant that their creativity was quite limited. They had to obey exactly as they were told, instead of thinking up their own ways of following their orders that could save more lives or bring a more peaceful resolution. The only exceptions I've noticed in the whole clone army are two ARC troopers, who called themselves Fives and Jangotat. They somehow partially conquered their programming and obeyed the spirit of their orders instead of the letter, and brought about good results in their campaigns. But almost all other clones didn't even come close to achieving any sort of greatness like that; even most of the other ARC troopers and Republic commandos were still bound to strict obedience.

And then there's the case of independent-mindedness. The clones, because of their conditioning, lacked full independence of the mind, so they were always dependent on a higher authority to tell them to do what they did. And it was because of this that so few of them could resist the pull of Order 66, the contingency order that outlawed the Jedi Order and meant the deaths of so many Jedi. And now, it appears, with their transformation into Imperial stormtroopers, they have no independent minds, whatsoever; they are purely docile to the blasted Emperor.

This is not the case, however, with men and women like those in my militia. They were never grown in a lab, they were born naturally; and because of that, there was no one but the Force to program any thoughts or instincts into their minds. These brave warriors can question or object to orders if they think they don't make sense, or if they know of a better way to defeat the enemy, and they can tell good orders from bad ones, too. Their creativity rarely has limits, as well, so they're able to think of new ways to beat a foe, destroy an enemy weapon, or otherwise save the day. They don't have to be treated so strictly. And, most obviously of all, their minds are fully independent, meaning that they don't need to always have an authority figure telling them exactly what to do. Even the ARC troopers and Republic commandos couldn't match my men in independent-mindedness.

Sadly, however, most of my fellow Jedi were fooled by the clones' seemingly innocent nature, and were willing to lead them in battle. Everyone from Obi-Wan Kenobi to Aayla Secura to Anakin Skywalker trusted and befriended them, and were betrayed by them. But the Jedi wouldn't listen to me, and why? Simply because my personality is a little outwardly hostile. Well, I _will_ admit that I could afford to be a little more likeable in an Order where most of my fellow Jedi showed each other the utmost respect, but that didn't mean that all my advice should have been disregarded by them; I mean, we can't _all_ grow up to be as respectful as Master Yoda! The only Jedi Masters who sort of shared my low opinion of clones that I know of were Quinlan Vos, whose dislike of clones was more personal than professional, and Pong Krell, who hated clones with every fiber of his being, but who also turned to the dark side and betrayed not just the 501st, but his own fellow Jedi.

Still, though, I feel some satisfaction that my theory of non-clones being much more fit to be soldiers than clone troopers has been vindicated, even though it was in a tragic way that it came about. I haven't failed to hear that many new stormtroopers are birth-born recruits as well as Fett- and non-Fett-clones, and I do show just _a little _more mercy when I have to kill a stormtrooper who isn't a clone, which I can sense through the Force, because I feel a little sorry for non-cloned people who have to serve alongside those clones as foot soldiers, though I still have to fight them fiercely, because evidently, the Empire has trained them to be just as ruthless and brutal as the clone stormtroopers. But with the sole exceptions of the clone of Starkiller and the Force-sensitive clone trooper X2, I will never allow any Republic/Imperial trained clones to serve in my military. The galaxy desperately needs to take back what is theirs from the blasted clone monsters of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, and in this new Civil War, I want to bring that about, and will stop at nothing to see that it happens!


	2. No, they are not!

**No, they are not!**

The Empire certainly has sunk to a new low, to say the least! Here I am, serving on my personal home world of Kamino, probably the second best place for me to serve next to the battlefield, and I am surrounded by idiots who have given me a new perspective on how to look at ordinary people from backwater worlds, at least when it comes to making them soldiers.

I am Clone Commander Cody, battalion commander of the still-functioning 212th Attack Legion, though most people within the Empire prefer to call me CC-2224, my unit number, instead. I still don't understand why the Empire decided to ramp up the uniformity of its troops; nobody ever tells a clone anything! I have served the Empire faithfully since the end of the Clone Wars, helping the 501st Legion with such important missions as the defeat of many Separatist holdouts and the unexpected clone rebellion on Kamino. We clones of Jango Fett never were people who enjoyed killing our own kind, but those clones were bred to take up arms _against_ the Empire, and had no regard for us, so we didn't find it as difficult to wipe out those rogues when we were ordered to.

It was after that, when things started to go downhill for the clone army. The Emperor decided that an army of genetically identical clones was too susceptible to corruption and could be used against him. As a result, he started arranging for clones to be produced from different templates besides Fett (though the Fett DNA would still surely be used to make more clone stormtroopers), and he also opened a recruiting program to get ordinary humans into the ranks of the stormtroopers. And let's just say that I don't think I'll ever be the same as I was during and just after the Clone Wars.

It has been two years since the official declaration of an "Alliance to Restore the Republic" by several Imperial senators, leftover Separatist warriors, people from neutral planets, and treacherous Imperial deserters, and I am stuck with the worst possible troopers a veteran of the Clone Wars could possibly have. It was hard enough adjusting to clones of other templates, because they were like aliens to my kind, like they came from another galaxy altogether. But the enlisted troopers are even worse, and unfortunately, I have to train and lead several platoons of enlisted troops here in Timira City on Kamino.

Let's get something straight here, first. I am of the firm opinion that clone troopers, particularly ones cloned from elite fighters like Jango Fett, are not only made for combat, but more fit for it than ordinary people are. Ordinary people have their own lives to live, and we clone stormtroopers fight daily to make sure they live in peace with the utmost freedom. We are bred and trained to be precise, perfect warriors, what with our adherence to orders, our instincts and creative thinking in combat, and our humility as soldiers who do not seek glory or fame, but rather a humble commitment to protecting the innocent, upholding the law, and serving the public trust, all while seeking a good and heroic death in order to "seed the stars," as Taun We and Glorii Profus once put it, with our valiant souls. We know that orders, followed instantly, keep you alive, and prevent society from falling apart. Think twice, and you might be dead.

And we have served well for so many years, with most of our numbers seeding the stars just like they had always dreamed of. But now, with the influx of different clones and enlisted men and women, not to mention the Emperor redirecting the cloning program to other pursuits, the operational effectiveness of the Imperial Army has declined significantly. It astounds and disgusts me how stupid and clumsy these recruits, volunteer and conscript alike, can be, even during training. I mean, just the other day, during maneuvers, I witnessed a new recruit bang his head on a blast door! Why does the Empire allow people like that to be soldiers in the Stormtrooper Corps? The clone troopers I used to know during the Clone Wars would have never made a mistake like that! Waxer and Boil were troopers worth being proud of, fighting their foes like the brave, strong men they were, Echo, Fives, and Hevy of the 501st were the same way, Captain Rex was an unusually independent trooper whom _nothing_ could take down, and even 99, a deformed maintenance clone in Tipoca City, Kamino, who was physically unfit for combat, had courage and devotion to the Grand Army of the Republic that puts these losers to shame instantly.

Long story short, a Fett clone trooper has the perfect common sense a soldier needs to survive and make a difference in a war, and these hastily grown _"new guys"_ and the enlisted fools are sorely lacking in common sense and even in sense of their surroundings. They are inferior soldiers, to put it mildly. Now I know why most of the normal people who fought in the Clone Wars and were not Jedi were considered to be "lesser heroes" or not heroes at all by the general public; they couldn't fight like we could. And where did that hotheaded Jedi Rahm Kota think he was going to get with his own miniature militia of non-clone soldiers, anyway?

I miss the old Grand Army of the Republic. It was a truly incredible fighting force, and its members were the best troopers the galaxy has ever seen. I love it so much, you could say I have a feeling of nostalgia over the _"army of one man,"_ as we proudly called it. I miss Waxer and Boil, Echo, Fives and Hevy, Rex, 99, and all the others whom I fought beside. Let's face it; ordinary people are just not cut out to be troopers, whatever Kota and the Rebel scum have to say to the contrary, and I would gladly sacrifice _all_ of these expendable jerks who can't adapt to the life of a stormtrooper properly for just _one_ real Jango Fett clone trooper. They are a disgrace to Fett's legacy as well as the legacy of the GAR, and I'm fully convinced that if Fett were still alive today, he would have them all killed for the same reason.

But I'm not even going to let that dissuade _me_ from being the best clone trooper I can be, because I _do_ have the sense of my surroundings and common sense to conduct myself in battle. I've heard rumors that Kota and his unstable "Starkiller" clone friend are going to attack Timira City soon, and _I,_ at least, intend to go out with a bang, not a whimper. I will seed the stars!

* * *

**Please R&R! Who do you think is more in the right? Rahm Kota or Commander Cody?**


End file.
